In today's implementation of legacy transmission technologies of Core Networks, Time Division Multiplex (TDM) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) technologies are typically used for voice communication. However, recent developments also make use of Internet Protocol (IP) based technologies.
In TDM and ATM based networks a predefined number of devices or time slots is provided exclusive for a single connection. Therefore, if all devices/time slots are used no further connection can be established. For this reason no more connections are admitted.
In contrast thereto, in IP based systems the connections share the available capacity of the IP network. A connection is consequently no longer characterized by a specific device or time slot but by a packet loss and/or jitter etc. Without any Admission Control any request for establishing a connection would be allowable, leading to a possible situation, that due to the sharing of the network, packets are lost e.g. in an over load case. This packet loss contributes to a disturbed connection, which—at a certain point—is no longer acceptable.
Therefore, an Admission Control is established which based on a measured packet loss provides for a measurement based admission Control (MBAC). The MBAC operates on a system level, typically on a Media Gateway, measuring the packet loss per site, i.e. per connected Media Gateway(s). If with respect to a Media Gateway a certain level of packet loss is reached or exceeded no further calls are admitted for that site. Such systems are known for example from U.S. Pat. No. 6,728,270 B1 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,614,790 B1, both assigned to the applicant.
Recent development show that the known systems allow for providing connections in a “moderate” environment on a “global” level for all connections served by a Media Gateway. However, they are inflexible to some extent in that they do neither allow for individual settings nor for an adaptive control of providing connections.